Just as Volodymyr Zelensky has so often outmanoeuvred the enemy on the battlefield and in the skies above, so he is doing now in the diplomatic sphere. In a surprise “open letter” to his Russian counterpart, President Zelensky has seized the diplomatic initiative with a panache entirely absent among Russia’s plodding attaches (led by Sergey Lavrov, a man for whom the word “lugubrious” might have been invented).
In the letter – in truth, more of a fashionable long essay – Mr Zelensky alternately taunts and challenges his adversary, countering the usual bogus Russian narrative and confronting Vladimir Putin, and indeed the world, with the ugly facts of how badly things are going for the Russian campaign, which has now lasted longer than the Great Patriotic War against the (real) Nazis after 1941.
Mr Zelensky was smart enough to clear his move with the Europeans and, more importantly, the Americans, neatly sidestepping any counter-move by the Kremlin to invoke “the spirit of Anchorage” – by reminding the US of last summer’s Trump-Putin summit – and persuade Donald Trump to put pressure on the Ukrainians to frame their offer in a manner more palatable to the invaders. Instead, given that the letter advocated the kind of direct talks Mr Trump would like to see, it received enthusiastic endorsement from the White House.
How sincere Mr Zelensky’s proposal for a face-to-face summit might be – he cannot have expected it to be actioned this day – may be doubted. However, it has wrong-footed Putin and left him looking like the man who wants to continue this conflict at whatever cost to his own people, in blood and in treasure.
That, of course, is exactly who Putin is – an imperialist content to sacrifice other people’s lives for his own vanity project. The more President Zelensky does to convey that fundamental, if inconvenient, truth to the Russian people, the better. The Russian Federation may be close to a dictatorship, but public opinion matters even there.
What’s more, the sheer scale of the loss of life and the impact on the economy cannot be concealed from the population for ever. While the military recruiters have been careful to avoid picking too many young people from Moscow and St Petersburg, so many Russian families have been touched by tragedy, and so many young troops have returned home injured and traumatised, that the Kremlin’s propaganda machine cannot counter reality.
Putin’s response, as might be expected, was minimalist and dismissive. He said that he had “had a glance” but “didn’t have a chance to look in detail”. He did object to Mr Zelensky mentioning his age, while it might have been more dignified to ignore it. He sees “no point” in a meeting. That won’t go down well in Washington – or in much of Russia.
It always bears repeating that the “special military operation” that Putin launched against Ukraine more than four years ago was supposed to be over, and victoriously so from the Kremlin’s point of view, at most four weeks later in 2022 (if not four days, on the more optimistic assumptions). No one, not even President Putin’s stooges, now calls the invasion of Ukraine anything other than a war – and increasingly, it is one that Russia is losing.
Against all odds, the people of Ukraine, outnumbered and outgunned by the Russian forces, first stopped the tanks on the short journey from the Russian border to Kyiv, and then, in the succeeding years, started to push back the Russian forces. Today, the conflict has transformed modern warfare, and Ukraine is the world leader in the weapon of the moment – the unarmed aerial vehicle, or drone. It is now the Ukrainians who are terrifying the Russians, although, unlike their callous foes, they concentrate on military and industrial targets.
The Ukrainians have been able to strike deep into Russian territory, in particular disrupting oil refineries (vital for exports to fund the Kremlin’s war machine), breaking supply lines, including to Crimea, and destroying ships in the Baltic and far distant bomber bases. President Zelensky’s hi-tech warriors have even managed to hit an oil depot in St Petersburg, just as the Russians’ version of the Davos economic summit was opening in the city.
Such is Kyiv’s air superiority that President Putin had to beg Mr Trump to persuade Ukraine not to target the annual military parade in Red Square. As it turned out, the Russians had nothing spare to show off in any case. Russia is also losing manpower and morale – and, despite a boost from higher energy prices, the economy continues to suffer.
From the earliest phases of the full-scale conflict, Mr Zelensky has maintained that “all wars end at the negotiating table”. As things stand, such a deal is not in sight in the short run, but Ukraine is doing everything it can to make sure that when that moment comes, it will be far more advantageous to Kyiv than anyone – including Presidents Trump and Putin – ever envisaged. Mr Zelensky should be satisfied with his missive, in its way just as effective as any missile.
